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JOHN OF RUYSBROECK
THE ADORNMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE
THE SPARKLING STONE
THE BOOK OF SUPREME TRUTH
Notes
INTRODUCTION
I
JAN VAN RUYSBROECK-three of whose most important works are here
for the first time presented to English readers-is the greatest of
the Flemish mystics, and must take high rank in any list of
Christian contemplatives and saints. He was born in 1273, at the
little village of Ruysbroeck or Ruusbroeck between Brussels and
Hal, from which he takes his name; and spent his whole life within
his native province of Brabant. At eleven years old, he is said to
have run away from home and found his way to Brussels; where he
was received by his uncle Jan Hinckaert, a canon of the Cathedral
of St Gudule. Hinckaert, who was a man of great piety, lived with
another devout priest named Francis van Coudenberg in the most
austere fashion; entirely devoted to prayer and good works. The
two ecclesiastics brought the boy up, and gave him a religious
education, which evidently included considerable training in
theology and philosophy: subjects for which he is said to have
shown, even in boyhood, an astonishing aptitude. In 1317 he took
orders, and obtained through his uncle's influence a prebend's
stall in St Gudule; a position which he occupied for twenty-six
years.
During youth and early middle-age, then, Ruysbroeck lived in
Brussels, fulfilling the ordinary duties of a cathedral chaplain:
and here some of his earlier works may have been written. Here no
doubt he developed that shrewd insight into human character to
which his books bear witness; and here gained his experience of
those "false mystics" and self-sufficient quietists so vividly
described and sternly condemned in the second book of The
Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, in The Book of Truth, and
other places. In the early fourteenth century a number of
heretical sects, of which the Brethren of the Free Spirit were
typical, flourished in the Low Countries. Basing their doctrine on
a pantheistic and non-Christian conception of the Godhead, they
proclaimed the "divinity of man," and preached a quietism of the
most soul-destroying kind, together with an emancipation from the
fetters of law and custom which often resulted in actual
immorality.1 As Ruysbroeck grew in knowledge of the true
contemplative life, the dangers attending on its perversion became
ever more clear to him: and he entered upon that vigorous campaign
against the heretical quietists which was the chief outward event
of his Brussels period.
As to his spiritual development during these years, we can have no
certain knowledge: since none of his works are exactly dated, and
the order in which they should be arranged is a matter of
inference. But it is inherently probable that he was experiencing
the early stages of that mysterious growth of the soul which he
describes so exactly in the first two books of The Adornment of
the Spiritual Marriage: the hard self-discipline, the
enlightenment, raptures, and derelictions, of the "active" and
"interior" life. At this period, he had made little impression on
his contemporaries. The Augustinian canon Pomerius, who had known
in their old age some of Ruysbroeck's friends and followers, and
who wrote his Life2 in the year 1420, describes him as a simple,
quiet, rather shabby-looking person, who "went about the streets
of Brussels with his mind lifted up into God." Yet it is certain
that great force of character, much shrewd common sense, and
remarkable intellectual qualities lay behind this meek appearance.
We know how greatly he disliked "singular conduct" in those who
had given themselves to the spiritual life. They should be, he
thought, like "other good men";3 and this ideal found expression
in his own life. A devout and orthodox Catholic, well read in
scholastic theology and philosophy, on the mental and social side
at least, he was a thorough man of his time; apparently accepting
without criticism its institutions and ideas. Many passages in his
works indicate this: for instance, his constant and unquestioning
use of the categories of mediaeval psychology, or his quiet
assumption4 that "putting to the torture" is part of the business
of a righteous judge. But on the spiritual side his period
influenced him little. There, his concern was with truths which
lie, as he says, "outside Time" in the Eternal Now; and when he is
trying to interpret these to us the Middle Ages and their
limitations fall away. Then we catch fragments which Plato or
Plotinus on one hand, Hegel on the other, might recognise as the
reports of one who had known and experienced the Reality for which
they sought. "My words," said Ruysbroeck, "are strange, but those
who love will understand": and this indeed is true, for he
possessed in an extraordinary degree the power-which so many great
mystics have lacked-of giving verbal and artistic expression to
his soaring intuitions of Eternity.
In 1343, when he was fifty years old, the growing sense of
contrast between those intuitions and the religious formalism and
unreality of the cathedral life, the distracting bustle of the
town, reached a point at which it seems to have become unendurable
to him. Together with Hinckaert and Coudenberg-both now old men-he
left Brussels for ever; all three intending to settle in some
lonely country place, where they could devote themselves to the
life of prayer and contemplation. They were given the old
hermitage of Groenendael, or the Green Valley, in the forest of
Soignes outside Brussels. There they were presently joined by
disciples, and formed a small community, which was eventually
placed under the rule of the Augustinian canons. Coudenberg became
the provost and Ruysbroeck the prior; and under their government
the priory of Groenendael soon became known as the home of a
special holiness.
We shall probably be right if we identify his thirty-eight years,
sojourn in the forest with the "God-seeing" stage of Ruysbroeck's
mystical life.5 Here without doubt all his greatest works were
written. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage must have been
composed soon after his retreat from Brussels, for we know that in
1350 he sent a copy of it to the group of Rhenish mystics who
called themselves the Friends of God. The Sparkling Stone and The
Book of Truth-both written at the request of friends, to explain
difficult points in his earlier books-belong to a later date. We
need not feel surprised that the full flowering of his genius
should coincide with his abandonment of the world. In one form or
another such abandonment has been found imperative by all the
great explorers of Eternity; whose inward quest of the One nearly
always entails some withdrawal from the multiplicity of things.
But beyond this, there was in Ruysbroeck's mysticism-at once so
intimate in its feeling so vast in its reach-a deeply poetic
strain. The silence and growing beauty of the forest ministered to
this: and many passages in his books show how easily he discovered
intimations of divinity through the loving contemplation of
natural things. A beautiful tradition tells us that he would go
out alone into the woods when he felt that the inspiration of God
was upon him; and there, sitting under his favourite tree, would
write as the Holy Ghost dictated. The brethren used to declare
that once, having been absent many hours from the priory, he was
at last found in this place, rapt in ecstacy and surrounded by a
brilliant aura of divine light-a legend which closely resembles
many similar stories in the lives of the saints.
Such ecstatic absorption in God, however, formed only one side of
Ruysbroeck's religious life. True to his own doctrine of the
"balanced career" of action and contemplation as the ideal of the
Christian soul6 his rapturous ascents towards Divine Reality were
compensated by the eager and loving interest with which he turned
towards the world of men. In the daily life of the priory he
sought perpetually for opportunities of service, especially those
of the most menial kind. As time passed, and his great mystical
gifts became known, many disciples came to him: amongst them
Gerard Groot, afterwards the founder of the Brothers of the Common
Life and hence spiritual ancestor of Thomas a Kempis. To all these
he gave patient help and robust advice; initiating them, so far as
it was possible, into the secrets of the true spiritual life, and
ruthlessly exposing the pious pretensions of those who sought only
a reputation for sanctity. It is clear even from his writings that
he possessed to a remarkable degree the "gift of the discernment
of spirits"-in other words, that his shrewd judgment of humanity
seldom failed him. All know the story of the two priests, who came
from Paris to ask his opinion of their spiritual state: merely to
receive the truthful but disconcerting reply, "You are as holy as
you wish to be!"
The thirty-eight years which Ruysbroeck passed at Groenendael
were, from the point of view of the earthly biographer, almost
devoid of incident. True, he formed many friendships with the most
spiritual men of his time, and seems occasionally to have left his
priory in order to visit them. We possess a charming account of
one such visit; that to Gerard Naghel, the Prior of Herines, at
whose suggestion The Book of Truth was written. "His peaceful and
joyful countenance, his humble good-humoured speech," says Gerard,
made him loved by all with whom he came into contact: a sentence
which brings to mind Ruysbroeck's own picture of those happy men
who walk in the way of love.
"Those who follow the way of love
Are the richest of all men living:
They are bold, frank, and fearless,
They have neither travail nor care,
For the Holy Ghost bears all their burdens.
They seek no outward seeming,
They desire nought that is esteemed of men,
They affect not singular conduct,
They would be like other good men."7
Further, he saw during these years the rapid growth of the
community-now swiftly becoming one of the chief centres of
spiritual life in the Low Countries-and the wide dissemination of
his own works. He even lived to see certain passages in those
works criticised, as supporting a pantheistic and heretical view
of the union of the soul with God. The Book of Truth was written
to refute this accusation. But the true events of these years took
place for him in that supernal world of high contemplation which
it was his special province to disclose to his fellow-men. There
his real life was fixed. There his loving ardour was for ever
young. Thither he drew those treasures of mystical knowledge which
he is said to have poured forth to his brethren in long ecstatic
discourses when the Spirit impelled him to speak: for he never
taught or spoke unless he felt himself inspired thereto by God.
When old age came upon him, though his ghostly vision never lost
its keenness his earthly eyes grew dim: and his later works were
dictated, when the Spirit moved him, to one of the younger
brothers of the house. At eighty-eight years of age his strength
failed: and after a short illness, which never clouded the
radiance of his spirit, he died upon December 2nd, 1381.
II
Ruysbroeck wrote all his works in the dialect of his native
province of Brabant: which stands in much the same relation to
modern Flemish as Chaucer's English stands to our own speech.
Eleven of these works have come down to us in various MS.
collections; and all of them, with one or two others of doubtful
authenticity, are included in the great standard Latin translation
made in the sixteenth century by the Carthusian monk Laurentius
Surius.8
The authentic writings are these:
1. The Spiritual Tabernacle: a long symbolic treatise on the
tabernacle of the Israelites, considered as a type of the
spiritual life.
2. The Twelve Points of True Faith: a short mystical
interpretation of the Creed.
3. The Book of the Four Temptations: an oblique attack on false
mystics.
These are probably early works.
4. The Kingdom of God's Lovers.
5. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage.
Two elaborate and orderly treatises on the threefold life and
development of the soul, which probably belong to the first years
at Groenendael.
6. The Mirror of Eternal Salvation: written before 1359.
7. The Seven Cloisters: written before 1363.
8. The Seven Degrees of Love: written before 1372.
This group of works, forming a graduated instruction on the
ascetic and mystical life, seems to have been written for Dame
Margaret Van Meerbeke, a nun in the Convent of Poor Clares at
Brussels.
9. The Book of the Sparkling Stone.
10. The Book of Supreme Truth.
11. The Twelve Beguines.
These three books, the substance of which is now accessible to
English readers,9 contain the finest fruit of Ruysbroeck's genius.
The Twelve Beguines is partly written in the rough rhymed verse
which he uses in many parts of The Kingdom of God's Lovers and
other places; as if at times his ecstatic apprehensions presented
themselves to the surface mind in a rhythmic form and "prayer into
song was turned." There is a short example of this in The Book of
Truth. Such verse, however, though its uncouth strangeness gives
to it an impressive quality, is a far less successful medium for
the expression of his subtle mystical perceptions than the
vigorous prose style of his best passages; for instance, the
wonderful ninth chapter of The Sparkling Stone.10
When we come to examine the character of these mystical
perceptions, we find that Ruysbroeck was one of the few mystics
who have known how to make full use of a strong and disciplined
intellect, without ever permitting it to encroach on the proper
domain of spiritual intuition. An orderly and reasoned view of the
universe is the ground plan upon which the results of those
intuitions are set out: yet we are never allowed to forget the
merely provisional character of the best intellectual concepts
where we are dealing with ultimate truth. Ultimate truth, he says,
is not accessible to the human reason: "the What-ness of God" we
can never know.11 Yet this need not discourage us from exploring,
and describing as well as we can, those rich regions of
approximate truth and life-giving experience which await us beyond
the ramparts of the sensual world. The intellectual ideas and
symbols which he uses most often are taken to a large extent from
the Bible and the Liturgy, and the works of his great predecessors
and contemporaries; and conform to the main lines of the Christian
mystical tradition. St Paul and St Augustine, in particular, have
influenced his thought. The notion popularised by M. Maeterlinck,
that Ruysbroeck was an "ignorant monk" who became in his ecstacies
a profound philosopher, is contradicted by the reminiscences of
Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, the many quotations from Dionysius
the Areopagite, St Augustine, Richard of St Victor, St Bernard,
and other mystical authors, which we find in his works. Indeed,
only those familiar with these great seers and thinkers are in a
position to recognise the sources and unravel the meaning of his
more difficult passages. He was in fact almost as well equipped on
the intellectual as on the contemplative side: and hence was
enabled to interpret to others, in language with which all
educated Christians in his day were more or less familiar,
something at least of the adventures of his spirit in the
fathomless Ocean of God.
Those intellectual concepts, however, of which he availed himself,
are constantly used by him in an original way: and always as a
means of expressing the results of direct personal inspiration and
experience. Particularly characteristic is the living quality with
which he invests theological formulae that for us have become
fixed and sterile. As Dante, without deviating from the narrow
path of scholastic philosophy, brings us at last into the presence
of "that Eternal Light which loves and smiles,"12 so Ruysbroeck
leads us back by way of the most orthodox Trinitarian doctrine to
the very heart of Reality: the eternal and abysmal Fountain of
life-giving life.
In the three books which are now translated we shall find all his
most characteristic ideas, though here it is only possible to
touch upon a few of them.13 For Ruysbroeck, as for St Augustine,
Reality is both Being and Becoming: one-fold and changeless in
essence, active and diverse in expression-a dualism aptly
represented by the theological dogma of the Trinity in Unity. So
too man, the image of God, is a unity who manifests himself in
diversity; "made trinity, like to the unmade Blessed Trinity," as
our own mystic Julian of Norwich has it.14 The ultimate truth is
the Godhead: the Divine Unity of religion, the Absolute of
philosophy. It is Simple, not with the simplicity of negation but
with the simplicity of complete affirmation: gathering up into its
unity all the rich complexities of power, wisdom, and love. In its
essence it is "dark," "naked," "wayless"; inaccessible to all the
processes of thought. Yet it is alive through and through; the
eternal "lifegiving ground" from which all comes. The ideas of
"Fatherhood", and "Sonhood" represent its quickening
fruitfulness;15 the Holy Ghost is the name of the Divine energy
and love which pours forth into the created world, and thence,
like a strong ebb-tide, draws all things back into their Origin.16
Though the soul plunged in God, "sunk in His unity," seems to
itself to experience a profound rest and stillness, yet it is
really surrendered to the movement of this mighty power: for "God
is an ocean that ebbs and flows."
The ideas, then, of movement, effort, and growth are central for
Ruysbroeck's thought. Again and again we are impressed by his
almost modern sense of life and action as the substance of the
real: his freedom from merely static conceptions. Therefore we
find that the theme of all his more important books is the growth
and development of the soul: the forms in which God's energy plays
upon it, the forms which should be taken by its response. The goal
of this development is the unified state of "pure simplicity" in
which it is able to "lose itself in the Fathomless Love" and enter
into the complete and beatific enjoyment, possession, or use of
God-for all these meanings are included in the word ghebruken,
usually translated "fruition," which is his favourite term for the
consummation of the mystical life.17
In The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage this growth is divided
into the three stages of the Active, Interior, and Superessential
Life: called in The Sparkling Stone by the old names of the state
of Servant, Friend, and Son. Man, we know, has a natural, active
life; the only one that he usually recognises. This he may "adorn
with the virtues" and make well-pleasing to God (Book I.). But
beyond this he has a spiritual or "interior" life, which is
susceptible of grace, the Divine energy and love; and by this can
be remodelled in accordance with its true pattern or archetype,
the Spirit of Christ (Book II.). Beyond this, again, he has a
superessential or "God-seeing life," in virtue of the spark of
Divine life implanted in him. By the union of his powers of reason
will and feeling with this spark-a welding of the several elements
of his being into unity-he may enter into his highest life; the
dual and God-like existence of fruition in God and work for God,
alternate action and rest (Book III.). The correspondences of the
active life are with that moral order which we recognise as
binding on all men of good will. Those of the interior life are
with the experiences which we usually recognise as religious and
spiritual. But the correspondences of the superessential life are
with a plane of being which lies beyond thought, and has, so far
as our intellectual perceptions go, no condition. It is a wayless
state, "above reason, not without reason";18 dark with excess of
light. This state is the Being of God; but for us it is "beyond
being."
The First Book, then, is almost wholly concerned with the
development of the Christian character: the only solid and
enduring foundation of the mystical life. It treats of the virtues
which adorn our human nature and make it ready for the coming of
the Spirit of Christ; and of the primary importance of intention,
the stretching out of the loving will toward God, "having Him in
mind" in all things. "Mean only God," said the old English
mystics. So for Ruysbroeck meyninghe en minnen-will and love-sum
up the obligations of the soul at this stage of its growth, and
prepare it for the greater experiences of the interior life.
Though he never uses the traditional formula of the Mystic Way, we
may regard this active life as more or less equivalent to the Way
of Purgation. The same stage is treated in the 1st and 6th
chapters of The Sparkling Stone and the 3rd chapter of The Book of
Truth.
The Second Book goes on from moral training to spiritual training,
and includes all that ascetic writers mean by the "Illuminative
Way." It deals with those "ghostly exercises," the deliberate
responses of the soul to the invitation of God, which form the
first degrees of our interior life, and with the dawning of the
true mystical consciousness. It falls into three chief divisions,
treating of three ways in which the Spirit of God comes into our
inner man (caps. 5, 6, and 7).
In the first division (caps. 8-32) Ruysbroeck treats of the action
of grace on the "lower powers," or sense life. In the allegory of
the Seasons, he describes the normal development of the
illuminated life in its emotional aspect: its joys and ardours,
reactions and despairs. The Holy Ghost "hunting the spirit of man"
(cap. 3) has seized and transfigured those "desirous, affective
and irascible" powers of the soul which, according to the doctrine
of medieval psychology, make up natural life of normal men.19
In the second division (caps. 35-38) this process is extended to
the "higher powers" of the soul: the memory or mind, the
understanding, and the will. The experience of God is, for these
higher powers, an experience of fresh enlightenment and fresh
ardour; in Ruysbroeck's favourite imagery, of light and fire.
Grace, which dwells like a living fountain at the heart of our
personality-the "unity of the spirit"-thence pours forth into each
faculty in three streams of radiance: claerheit, a word expressive
at once of pervading brightness and limpid clearness, which occurs
on almost every page of his writings. The sense of this supernal
clarity, veritably experienced-a viva luce, a quickening light, of
which we become aware when we open the soul's eyes-is found in
nearly every mystical writer from the time of St John, and
probably originates in that consciousness of enhanced lucidity
which frequently accompanies spiritual exaltation. It was
crystallised by the schoolmen in the doctrine of the lumen
gloriae-the Divine light which transfigures the soul and makes it
like to God20-and much of Ruysbroeck's work is really a poetic
elaboration of this idea. As a "simple light" this Radiance now
frees the mind from the teasing complexity of distracting images:
as a "spreading light" it illuminates the understanding: as a
burning flame, it enkindles the will. The self thus becomes
capable of the first form of contemplation, adherence to God by
means of the purified reason and will: responding to the "loving
drawing-nigh" of God-dat minlike neyghen Gods-with an ardent
outstretching of himself towards that seeking and compelling
power.
The powers of the soul, then, in the second stage of illumination,
become inundated by the divine claerheit. It "drenches them"; and
the result of this is seen in the state of perfect charity to
which the self now attains: the condition of equable outflowing
love to God and all manner of men (caps. 39-43). In the third and
highest stage (caps. 49-65), we pass beyond the enhancement and
enlightenment of the separate powers of our nature to the
"essential being" of the self: that unity of the spirit of which
Ruysbroeck is always speaking, and wherefrom the powers proceed,
as the Divine Persons proceed from the Unity of God.21 Whether our
mental and emotional powers as such participate in the spiritual
life, is for him a secondary consideration. They may do so, if
they be wholly surrendered to God. But our true union with Him
takes place in the abysmal deeps of our being-our "ground"-and
ever abides there: for here our life, as it were, buds out from
the Divine life, and here God dwells eternally "according to His
essence." If we learn to enter within, passing beyond the powers
to the unity of the spirit, we become conscious of this.22 There
we experience His mysterious touch and stirrings; feel and respond
to the thrust and invitation of His love, as He drives each
created spirit forth to work His will, and draws it home again
towards His heart. There, outside Time, the Eternal Birth takes
place (caps. 57-61).
As a result of this practice in introversion, this simplification
of consciousness, the self now first becomes capable of the second
form of contemplation, described in The Twelve Beguines as"A knowing which is in no wise;
For ever abiding above the reason."23
and enters upon that profound yet simple communion with God which
Ruysbroeck calls the most inward of all exercises. For this his
favourite image is that of feeding: the soul tastes God (cap. 65),
eats, devours, assimilates Him, and in her turn is eaten and
consumed24-language which probably reflects his great personal
devotion to the Eucharist. With this mystical savouring and
feeding upon Reality, the self reaches the term of the interior
life, and the full stature of that "secret friend of God"
described with such marvellous subtlety in the 8th chapter of The
Sparkling Stone.
It is at this point that the dangers of a false mysticism make
themselves felt. Here, then, Ruysbroeck enters upon a vigorous and
acute criticism of Quietism (caps. 66-67): especially valuable to
us at the present day, when so many irresponsible apostles of "new
mysticism" are recommending voluntary passivity of this type as a
substitute for the stern discipline and perpetual willed effort
involved in the Christian science of prayer. Ruysbroeck describes
the interior blankness and silence of the quietist as a psychic
trick: a deliberate sinking down into the subconscious-the subsoil
of human nature-where it is true that the Divine Life dwells and
supports our created life, but where we are below instead of above
the levels of normal consciousness. Here, indeed, the soul
experiences a sensation of rest and peace: but it is merely
resting in its own emptiness, a false repose which demands no
exercise of virtue, no tension of the will, and is a caricature of
the active and loving surrender taught by the Christian saints.
The true emptiness and idleness of which Ruysbroeck speaks as an
essential preparation of the contemplative state, is a condition
of meek and passive attentiveness to God, which excludes
consciousness of the ordinary objects of perception and thought;
sweeps and garnishes the interior castle. Here the virtue is not
in the emptiness and idleness, but in the humble and eager
yielding of ourselves. Although man cannot by his own effort reach
God, yet without such deliberate loving effort we shall never
possess Him.25
Beyond even the highest point of this interior life, in which the
contemplative feels himself to be living "in God,"26 is that
transfigured or deified life, as the Platonic mystics named it,
which Ruysbroeck calls overwesen-superessential-the life of the
"God-seeing man" (Book III). Whereas in the interior life we may
be said to re-discover the lost inheritance of our spirit, in this
life there is a genuine transcendence, a passing beyond that
spirit's created being: for the Being of God, in which this
consummation is found, is "more than being" to us. It abides
beyond all the concepts of reason, beyond anything that we can
name or describe, outside Time, in the bosom of Divine Reality:
that deep Quiet of the Godhead which cannot be moved. Those who
ascend thereto have passed from the state of "secret friends" to
that of the "hidden sons" of God, and completed the soul's journey
to its home.27 Then they find themselves, so far as their separate
consciousness persists, in a place that is placeless and a way
that is wayless: in the abysmal Onwise of God, a word for which we
have no exact equivalent, but which embodies one of Ruysbroeck's
most important conceptions, and is the occasion of some of his
most mysterious utterances. It represents that world of spiritual
reality which is beyond all attributes and conditions; which is
neither This nor That, which is "in no wise"-the Absolute wherein
all ways and modes of being, all wise, are swallowed up, and all
our finite perceptions die into ignorance and darkness (cap. 4).28
"The splendour of That which is in no wise is as a fair mirror
Wherein shines the everlasting light of God:
It has no attributes,
And in it all the activities of reason fail.
It is not God
But it is the light whereby we see Him:
Those who walk in the divine light thereof
Discover in themselves the Unwalled."29
Seen from the synthetic and spiritual point of view, this supernal
world of experience is the Essential Unity, wherein the richness
of Eternal Life consists, and where the surrendered soul enjoys
the peaceful fruition of God. But seen from the analytic and
intellectual point of view it is the Essential Nudity, the
"nought" or "divine dark" of Dionysius the Areopagite: for it has
been stripped of every character of which we can think.30 Here the
mystic feels himself, as regards his essential being, to be poured
out into God, melted and merged in Him as a river in the sea: and,
as regards his own separate consciousness, apprehends Him in one
simple act of absorbed attention "seeing and staring" with wide-
open eyes. It is in this one act, sometimes felt by us as a
passing beyond ourselves, sometimes as a fixed ecstatic vision,
"beholding that which we are, and becoming that which we behold"
that the self at last knows itself to be one life and one spirit
with God.31
The mystic has now entered into union with the three wise, the
three modes or ways, under which Divine Love imparts itself in the
spirit of man: characteristically distinguished by Ruysbroeck as
three forms of movement. First this energetic love pours itself
out from the Godhead into us as grace: and we, in receiving it and
making it ours by our virtues and good works, are united to God
"through means." This is the function of the active life
harmonising man's work with God's work. Then, as a compelling
tide, it draws us within its own flood back towards God. This is
the union "without means"' wherein we are wholly surrendered to
His love: it is the proper condition of the interior life. But
when we have reached the superessential life, and seem to our own
feeling to be lost in the Darkness, burned up in the Brightness,
and sunk in the Eternal Stillness of God-that "dark silence where
all lovers lose themselves,"32-then the circle is complete. We are
made part of His divine fruition or "content the eternal
satisfaction and eternal activity of Perfect Love; achieving thus
the "union without distinction," though not union without
"otherness."33 Henceforward we can participate in God's dual life
of rest and work, transcendent fruition and immanent fruitfulness:
abiding in restful possession of Him, yet perpetually sent down
from the heights to serve the whole world.34
The final state of the Christian mystic, then, is not annihilation
in the Absolute. It is a condition wherein we dwell wholly in God,
one life and truth with Him; yet still "feel God and ourselves,"
as the lover feels his beloved, in a perfect union which depends
for its joy on an invincible otherness. The soul, transfused and
transfigured by the Divine Love as molten iron is by the fire,
becomes, it is true, "one simple blessedness with God"35 yet ever
retains its individuality: one with God beyond itself, yet other
than God within itself.36 The "deified man" is fully human still,
but spiritualised through and through; not by the destruction of
his personality, but by the taking up of his manhood into God.
There he finds, not a static beatitude, but a Height, a Depth, a
Breadth of which he is made part, yet to which he can never
attain: for the creature, even at its highest, remains finite, and
is conscious that Infinity perpetually eludes its grasp and leads
it on. So heaven itself is discovered to be no mere passive
fulfillment, but rather a forward-moving life:37 an ever new
loving and tasting, new exploring and enjoying of the Infinite
Fulness of God, that inexhaustible Object of our knowledge and
delight. It is the eternal voyage of the adventurous soul on the
vast and stormy sea of the Divine.
EVELYN UNDERHILL
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